Three Blue Cards from Boyle in Pennsylvania

I cannot say for sure when each of these cards from Mick Boyle left Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, for Schenectady, New York. The first two are postmarked 5 Oct 2004, but all I can read is "Oct 2004" on the postmark from the last one. I'll treat them all as if they came to me at once, but the third arrived separately.

The first card is just another example of the fine typographic design created by Mick, who's certainly the most accomplished typographer I deal with. He has taken the blue outlines of a number of identical birds and fit them together in a pattern similar to those designed by M.C. Escher. But I also love the text: the red return address, the offsides tail of the Q in QBDP, and the inclusion of a Greek capital E in the chosen typeface.

I chose this side of the card (too lazy to do both as I try to catch up with mailart documentation) because I think the card may be presenting us bluejays, and therefore it echoes Roy Arenella's bluejaypost. But the "message" side, also presented in blue, is an interesting jigsaw of images: a tv-scan-lined images of a young man, a drawing of a pair of feet across the grain of a wood floor, a bound man with his mouth taped, and about a third of a naked man who is tattooed as "Joe" and whose left eye is barely visible to our own.


Mick Boyle, [escherbirdpatterning] (Oct 2004)
On the face of this card, Mick writes, "here is one way to deal with spam." And it is a beautiful solution to spam. I like how words suddenly jump out of the text announcing themselves before falling back into tumult.


Mick Boyle, [spamtextvisualization] (Oct 2004)
This old almost-deckle-edged snapshot is a beautiful composition, and the design I once again love. We miss, however, the "SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE" who are arguably the central subject of this card. On the reverse is a blurry close-up of three very pink and quite shiny men, who are smiling at something to the right of me.


Mick Boyle, [snapshotpostcard] (Oct 2004)
un violon d'ingres